Sessions are now scheduled! Click hereto see the final program.
Convergence!Come to Urbana-Champaign, the home of the University of Illinois, for the 2014 meeting of TAG USA. It will be an inspiring and lively yet affordable meeting in the true tradition of TAG. The plenary will be transcendent. The Saturday night dance? Not-to-be missed. Two days of break-out sessions will be featured on Saturday and Sunday. In addition, attendees can take part in two new TAG events: the first is a Friday-evening "Theoretical Bar Crawl" featuring a series of prominent archaeologists in their natural state (with a prize to the winning crawler); the second will be a "TAG Post-Mortem" session! Finally, optional tours of the archaeological complexes of Cahokia and Emerald, just 30 minutes from St. Louis, will be offered on Sunday the 25th or Monday the 26th, for anyone flying through St. Louis or wishing to make the 3-hour trip south of Urbana-Champaign.
Overview

The Theoretical Archaeology Group began in the U.K. in 1979 as a gathering of archaeologists interested in exploring the intersection of archaeology with frontiers in critical theory, philosophy, and anthropology. Since that time, an annual meeting has been held in the U.K. and a sibling branch was established in Scandinavia in 2000. In 2008, the TAG-USA group was formed and an inaugural conference held at Columbia University. The conference has grown each year and now provides a vibrant link between American and European archaeologists. TAG conferences have sparked some of the most inventive archaeological articles published in venues such as Archaeological Dialogues, Antiquity, and the Journal of Social Archaeology. Each year, a different institution takes responsibility for organizing the conference and serving as primary host. Tim Pauketat, Andrew Bauer, and Kristin DeLucia of the Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois are leading the organizing committee for the 2014 meeting in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

2014 Theme: "Convergence"

The theme for 2014 TAG in Urbana-Champaign is “convergence.” Inspired by recent theoretical and technological developments, the theme is intended to open this year’s discussions, via the plenary. Interpret it generously: after all, theory is a convergence of thought and experience, but so is life … a series of convergences, intersections, entanglements, meeting places, experiential movements, and productive collaborations.

The open plains of east-central Illinois lay bare such convergences. Our paths will intersect here, in the Land of Lincoln or the Silicon Prairie, much like the great rivers of the midcontinent’s heartland, its interstate highways, and the windswept lives of peoples past and present. Human history and nature here have a common platform. Convergence is, to large extent, what all of us do, how all of us live, what all of us study, and what TAG represents. Some possible or planned thematic foci could include:

Convergence as the intersection of material, spatial, and immaterial dimensions of sensuous experience (sight, sound, taste, touch), emotion, and knowledge;

Convergence as historical process: the happenings, spaces, and entanglements that give histories shape;

Convergence as method: the rapidly changing intersections of the digital humanities, science, ontology, and epistemology through high-tech visualizations and virtual realities;

Convergence as the mutual co-engagement of human intentionality with non-human forces, environmental causality and unintentional changes;

Convergence as the place where present meets past, where the global meets the local, where heritage meets history, where science meets humanity, and where the practical engages the theoretical.

The TAG 2014 Plenary 'Fundamental Convergences' will take place Friday evening, May 23rd, 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. followed by a wine and cheese reception.